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Look who came to lunch

by on May 16, 2012 in General, Visual Arts

The latest in our Q & A series with the people we meet over lunch in Vistas Dining Room.

As the panoramic views of the Bourgeau Mountain Range were embellished by the bright blue sky, I met Natalie Doonan, Joanna Neborsky, and Megan Morman – and I asked them a little about themselves.

Megan Morman (left), Joanna Neborsky, and Natalie Doonan in Vistas.

We are: visual artists and writers here for the Visual Arts thematic residency. It starts with Life is Beautiful, but you should look up the full name.

We are from: Montreal, New York, and Saskatoon

I came to The Banff Centre because: Megan: I make art about artists, specifically stories about the arts community and gossip about artists. I’ve always wanted to come to The Banff Centre because of the stories I’ve heard. I’m interested in the crazy things that happen when you get a bunch of artists together in a high-intensity, creative environment.

This morning: Joanna: I had a morning meeting where we rehearsed the schedule for the week. I then had a bit of studio time before lunch.

My after-lunch plans: Natalie:  I have a studio visit with a residency faculty member. We have three faculty members who we each meet with individually to discuss what we’re planning on doing during the residency and how it fits in to the general body of our work.

First impressions of Banff: Natalie:  There’s a lot going on. I’m still working on juggling my personal artistic objectives with all of the planned activity of the thematic residency.

Before I leave the Centre I want to: All: Visit the hot springs!  

The best item on today’s menu: The macaroni and cheese.

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The Gryphon Trio: live in your living room

by on May 9, 2012 in Audio, Music & Sound, Podcasts

Podcaster Camara Miller speaks with former CBC host Eric Friesen about the Gryphon Trio. Photo: Don Lee.

Quartet for the End of Time, by Olivier Messiaen, is a powerful and spiritual piece of chamber music; recounting the point of view of a man who had no idea whether he was living through the end of the world, as he knew it. A haunting, but not hopeless impression left by the French composer and soldier.

It was first heard on a bitterly cold January evening in 1941, by a group of prisoners and guards in Stalag VIII-A, a POW camp in Germany. Wednesday night, people at The Banff Centre and around the world got hear the piece live from the Rolston Hall.

The Gryphon Trio, along with clarinetist James Campbell, have returned to work on their latest recording at the Centre and were rounding off the trip with an intimate concert. This isn’t the first time they’ve come to create an album up on the hill. Having played together for 20 years, they’ve stopped by many times before to play and teach.

Former CBC host Eric Friesen was also here for the concert. His time at the CBC gave him an excellent chance to get the know the players over the years, and he’s host and facilitator for the evening as the quartet plays the repertoire from their new album.

Friesen took a few minutes to chat about the Gryphon Trio, as well as the haunting details about the premiere of this piece, in an interview earlier in the week.

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The live stream sounded great and was enjoyed by many both online and at the Rolston. If you missed it, a podcast of the show along with an interview with Eric Friesen will be up soon.

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Hear, feel, move, dance…

by on May 8, 2012 in Dance, Music & Sound

Choreographer Aszure Barton and composer Curtis Macdonald. Photo: Don Lee.

“Sound is vibration, vibration is movement … and movement is dance,” Curtis Macdonald says. “It’s all connected.” He’s talking about his latest project, collaborating with internationally acclaimed choreographer Aszure Barton to compose music for her new work, PROJECT XII.

Both of them have been in Banff for the past few weeks. Macdonald is an alto sax player, composer, and sound artist, and he’s been here with Aszure and dancers from her company, Aszure Barton & Artists, working six days a week on the new work, which is backed by The Banff Centre and a who’s who of partners, including The CanDance Network Creation Fund, National Arts Centre, Danse Danse, Canada Dance Festival, Le Grand Théâtre de Québec, La danse sur les routes,  and the Canada Council for the Arts.

“There’s a subtle energy in the mountains that helps bring things to life,” Macdonald says. He’s been able to mix environmental recordings made at Lake Minnewanka and along the Bow River into the soundscape for PROJECT XII. He meets regularly with Barton and the dancers. “I sketch something, and bring a recording to their studio. They listen as they rehearse, which gives them a chance to absorb it, and then we have a dialogue about how it’s working. It’s a very organic process.”

PROJECT XII will premiere on June 8 at the 2012 Canada Dance Festival , but those of us in Banff will have the opportunity to attend a special late-night sneak preview on Saturday, June 2.

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The Trickster Fireball Society

by on April 30, 2012 in Aboriginal Arts

Artist in residence in Aboriginal Arts, Gord Bruyere. Photo: Kim Williams

“Everybody who was associated with the incarnation of the Aboriginal Writers program in 2010 would agree that our group was unique,” says Gord Bruyere. ”During the residency itself, we all connected as a whole.” Now, they call themselves the Trickster Fireball Society, and they gather a few times throughout the year to mentor one another and share their work. Gord, also known as Trixterboy, asked the members of the Trickster Fireball Society join him for part of his current Aboriginal Arts residency, where they had a public reading and reunion last week.

“The Trickster in the Anishnabe culture is a truth speaker,” Gord told me when I asked him about the name of the Society. The Trickster is a destructive, rascally figure who shows up often in Anishnabe tales, with stories and actions that always have a hidden truth or lesson behind them.  The Trickster fluidly transforms itself into animals and other animate beings at will, inspiring Gord’s friends and fellow writers to transform their writing. “The Society’s short- and long-term projects are to move beyond the printed page and into other media,” he says. Members like Vera Wabegijig and Chandra Erlendson are now working in short films and photography, and Gord himself blogs and maintains an online community of writers.

There’s more: “When we first gathered, one of the Society’s members, Jason Malbeuf bought a little bottle of fireball whiskey and we stood around in a circle under the full moon by the Bow River, and passed around the bottle.” Now, the bottle of Fireball has become part of a ritual that the group performs together when they meet. “It was a conscious way for us to co-opt what many people see as a problem among aboriginal people —  alcoholism and addiction, but we’re trying to establish a different relationship with the spirit of alcohol.  We’re trying to make it sacred, we’re trying to transform it, and some people may think we shouldn’t use alcohol in this way, but that’s the Trickster part of it.”

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Setting stone for artist Mark Leckey

by on April 28, 2012 in Visual Arts

Installing BigBoxGreenScreenRefrigeratorActions in the Walter Phillips Gallery. Photo: Kim Williams

Four of the people from our preparatorial team at the Walter Phillips Gallery moved this giant slab of Rundle rock into the gallery this week. The rock plays a key role in Mark Leckey‘s exhibition BigBoxGreenScreenRefrigeratorActions, which will be on in the gallery through July 15. An iconic natural building material in the Bow Valley (it’s all over the Banff Springs Hotel and many of the Banff Centre’s buildings), there are only two Rundle rock quarries still in operation. One of them, Kamenka Quarry, near Canmore, loaned this stone for the show.

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Post-pro with artist and filmmaker Jeremy Collins

by on April 26, 2012 in Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, Film & Media

Jeremy Collins and Jessica Dymond working on "The Equation" in one of the Banff Centre's edit suites. Photo: Kim Williams

I’ve been at The Banff Centre since November as a video editor work study in the Film and Media department. One of the best things about the job is the variety of people I get to work with, and last week I had the pleasure of working with Jeremy Collins. Jeremy won The Banff Centre Award for Creative Excellence at the 2011 Banff Mountain Film Festival for his film The Wolf and the Medallion, and was back at the Centre to put the prize (post-production assistance) to good use, working on his newest film The Equation. It’s a short film about the quest for (and discovery of) beauty. Jeremy’s talent as a fine artist come through in the film’s distinctive aesthetic.

This project was a change of pace for me, but it was a treat. The Equation is a fiction film, and my background is primarily in documentary (though both genres always come down to storytelling). I have to admit, also, that I was a little nervous about working on a project that was already so developed — Jeremy had already done a very good rough cut of the film. My fears were completely unfounded. Jeremy’s enthusiasm put me at ease right away, and we established a very good workflow in a very short amount of time. We worked close to 60 hours in four days that week, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The Equation is premiering this weekend, at the 5 Point Film Festival in Colorado.

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